Is one honest to oneself about what one wants from the other?
If one lies to oneself, one will lie to the other.
To lie to oneself can only result from a false sense of virtue. But to lie to the other is a conscious sin. It is unforgivable.
To want sex, and to proclaim platonic love to oneself, is the basis of subconscious romantic deception. Conscious deception is when one proclaims platonic love to the other, knowing in one's heart that it is sex that one really wants.
Is there any other basis of a romantic relationship between opposite sexes than sex? Can such a relationship exist independant of the sexual need?
How can it? As long as I consider myself to be a man, the other is a woman. And how can there not be a subconscious striving after sexual pleasure?
Honesty also destroys romantic love. Deception coexists with romance.
To proclaim openly about one's true appetites is the surest way to go hungry. Romance is based on deception.
But Love is different from Romance.
Romance is for me.
Love is not for me. Not for the other. Love is existence reaching out to itself.
Any form of motive corrupts love.
Any kind of holding back corrupts love.
Holding back comes when something else is more important to me.
To give oneself completely is to hold nothing of any value. It is the way to total detachment.
To have attachments and to love is a contradiction.
Love is opposed to bondage. Love frees.
But that freedom is fearsome.
Love is a dangerous game.
Romance is basically cheating at love. Trying to love, but in an acquisitive way.
True love, does it seek contact with the beloved? Does it seek the beloved's company? What for?
Love wants to express itself for its own sake.
There are some who receive love more openly than others. It is a joy to love children, for example. To have nurtured a trust and vulnerability in the other means one can share love more deeply with the other.
Love does not fear rejection, because it does not seek anything apart from itself.
But to seek a particular object to love is delusion. To love when he is there, and to remain happy when he is not. That is the highest form of love. That is not being selfish, that is the highest form of unselfishness. A selfish man can never be happy by himself.
If I miss somebody, is that love? Is that holding on to him? Clinging to him, in one's mind. Clinging to his memory.
Yes.
Missing somebody is being romantic, it is not being loving.
Love radiates to all existence. Romance is exclusive and that is why it enhances emptiness. Love fulfills, romance only deepens the thirst.
Romance affirms the ego, Love roots out the ego.
To truly live is to learn to love.